Or, A Return and An Invitation From a Prodigal Mudcatter. :-)

In my (counts on fingers and toes)...oh, Lord, 17 years on the Internet, I've had a number of "homes"--favorite hangouts I check in on most every day, or at least several times a week. I started out on a former dial-up BBS in Omaha where I was known as Shadowspawn, and eventually found my way to the Mudcat 'bout a decade ago, where in deference to that earlier handle, I chose the name SDShad.

My most recent hang-out, since early 2008 when election primary season kicked into high gear, has been the Cafe Wellstone community of Progressive activists and assorted bloggers in the 3D virtual world of Second Life. [Insert standard disclaimers about not believing everything the corporate media tells you about the online world here.] In this newer hangout, I go by the moniker of Zathras Afarensis.

Last summer, I started DJing regularly "in world" (as SLers call it when they're...well...in that world) for this wonderful community of dedicated folks, and since last September, have a regular Tuesday night gig at the Cafe Wellstone called Zath's Album Cafe, where I have played for my friends there an eclectic collection of albums ranging from the Flying Burrito Brothers to Queen, with stops along the way for the likes of Randy Newman, KT Tunstall, Radiohead, Johnny Cash, and Wilco.

More recently, my humble guitar and I have begun to perform live music in SL--a couple of times I've sung Drew Calvin's "Give Me Freedom," which I picked up from one of Max's video Mudcat hootenanny sessions long about 9 years ago, and it's been really well received!

This year, I've also become rather active in a group who are organizing this year's Netroots Nation in Second Life (NNSL), which is the online component of the annual Netroots Nation convention for Progressive and Liberal bloggers, held this year in Pittsburgh. The group contains a lot of Wellstoners, but isn't identical to that group, and I've been tapped as Programming Director for this year's edition of NNSL.

Which means my responsibilities for NNSL include organizing events on our "land" in Second Life, both between now and the actual convention and concurrent with it, such as panel discussions and film events (we're showing a film called "A Soldier's Peace" later this month), as well as dances, concerts and fundraisers. And I don't know why the idea that brings me back to y'all didn't occur to me sooner--reconnect with all my old friends here (those as still are around), and see if there'd be interest in a Mudcat performers hootenanny in 3D cyberspace.

And when I started looking for Mudcatters in-world and found that dwditty's Rezday is today (that's the date somebody first created their SL account and "avatar"--Happy RezDay dwditty!), I took that as a sign that I ougtta just get up off my virtual kiester and post, and see if a) there are still some Mudcatters 'Cattin' around in my favorite virtual world, and b) if a "hey kids, let's put on an acoustic music show" type o' fundraiser concert that lends a bit of a helping hand to the efforts of a newer circle of friends might be of interest to any of them, or any who haven't tried out SL yet. Seems like a dandy opportunity to reconnect, and to introduce one group of people I rather dig to another group of people I rather dig.

Glad to be posting here again (and gladder still that I remembered my password),


Shad